


future proofing

by ignitesthestars



Series: a strange kind of redemption [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M, Friends to Enemies to Lovers, Oral Sex, Resolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vaginal Sex, becomes, it's complicated ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 09:40:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11124570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignitesthestars/pseuds/ignitesthestars
Summary: Luke doesn’t give a shit what anyone else thinks these days, but he’ll die for Annabeth Chase, and she knows it.All Annabeth wants is to finally get him out of her system.Really.(an au in which Luke lived, at the cost of being tied to Camp Halfblood))





	future proofing

Annabeth is twenty one years old and should fucking know better.

The house looms out of the dark, silhouetted by the flicker of torches. She's trying to talk Chiron into the environmental benefits of LEDs for their growing town's street lighting, but it's a work in progress.

“How long are you planning on standing out there?”

He's standing on the porch, forearms resting on the banister. Watching her, just like she's been ignoring him for the past ten minutes. Annabeth squeezes her eyes shut, but the darkness doesn’t offer up anything clever to say.

Probably because this isn’t a very clever thing to be doing.

“I don’t have any plans when it comes to you, Luke.”

He snorts, straightening, although his eyes don’t lift from her. They never do these days. She’s spent more energy than she wants to think about pretending that she doesn’t know why.

“I thought you’d join me, you know.” He says it casually, like he’s not bringing up that time he started a war that nearly destroyed the world.

“In annihilation? You didn’t know me half as well as you think you did.”

“Maybe that’s true.”

He doesn’t offer up anything more, but her irritation is pricked now. She moves, striding onto the porch until she’s planted in front of him.

“You never considered if I’d agree with you or not. You just assumed I’d follow you because I was a starry-eyed idiot.”

“You’d always been there before. Did I think a few days with Percy Jackson was going to change that? Not exactly.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” she spits, and they’re both taken aback at the vehemence in her voice, “bring him into this.”

Luke steps into her now, silver scar hooking his mouth into something like a sneer. “Why? Is the golden boy too holy to bring into what you wanted to do here tonight? Sorry we couldn’t all jump into Tartarus after you, some of us are tied to this forsaken place.”

“Oh, do you not like it here?” Sulphur curls thick in her throat and she swallows it down, glaring. “Because I’ve seen your other option, and trust me when I say you’d _beg_ for this if you had as well.”

She’s breathing hard, fingers curled into fists, braced for the next volley. But he surprises her by stepping back, face twisting in the strange light.

“You really think that’s where I was going to end up?”

Memory sweeps over her. The ceaseless heat. The taste of gasoline burning down to her gut. The despair of blindness, of losing Percy, of watching him teeter on the edge of the same darkness that had taken Luke in the end. Of knowing it was her own damn hubris that had gotten them both there in the first place. 

A touch on her wrist, feather light, brings her back to herself. Luke stands before her, and for the first time she sees uncertainty in his expression.

They don’t touch. He looks, gods, does he look, but he’s kept his hands to himself even when they spar, reluctant to bring more physicality into a fight even when she doesn’t hesitate to be brutal with him.

The strangeness in his expression, she realises, is loathing. Luke Castellan hates himself, and there’s a dark part of Annabeth that curls smugly in her gut and thinks, _good_.

“I think,” she says, blowing out a shaky hiss of air, “that the gods chose the judges of the underworld. And I think that you tried to destroy the gods.”

She doesn’t know what to expect in response to that. Silence, maybe. A denial would be pointless. The way he drops his head, though, breath brushing over her cheek until his lips hover a bare inch from her ear - that’s a surprise. Thick heat throbs through her body, pooling in her veins; she forces her own breathing steady, determined to not let him see her affected.

“Can you blame me?”

 _Yes_ , whispers a younger Annabeth. The one that had been left to hold the sky, the one who had been abandoned by someone she loved yet again. But Annabeth is twenty one years old and has been to hell and back, and she doesn’t know.

“I don’t know why I hate you anymore,” she admits, in lieu of answering his question.

He still doesn’t touch her, but she knows he’s smiling anyway. After everything he’s done, maybe that sounds something like forgiveness.

“But you do still hate me.”

“Absolutely,” she says, and kisses him.

He doesn't expect it. He's up in her face, the heat of his body settling into her bones, and he has the temerity to still in surprise, to let her lips meet his and do nothing.

“Don't pretend that you don't want this,” she whispers into his mouth.

Annabeth has never been especially good at reading people, but Luke hasn't bothered to hide anything from her since he came back. She's carried the weight of his eyes on her for years, and it's a relief just to have him close and trembling now.

“What about--”

She kisses the poison out of his mouth before he can spit it, drawing a barely-there groan of desperation from him when she does it. He starts forward this time and his hand is a brand on her hip where he steadies himself.

“I told you not to bring him into this.”

The last thing she wants is to be thinking about Percy when it’s Luke’s hand fisting in her shirt, Luke’s breath shuddering over her, Luke’s pulse crawling into her skin. She doesn’t want to be thinking at all.

“This is your choice,” he says. “Your decision. I didn’t ask you, didn’t even _suggest_ \--”

He cuts himself off, which is good because Annabeth is running out of ways to tell him to shut up.

“Fuck.” He crushes her to him, one strong arm wrapping around her waist until they’re chest to chest, mouth hard against hers. He has to lean down to do it but she’s never felt so tall. There’s a power in this that makes her giddy, in knowing he wants her. In knowing that he wants her despite himself. She understands in a way she never has before why some consider Aphrodite to be the most powerful of the gods, and then banishes that thought entirely.

There’s no space for the gods between them.

“Inside,” she gasps, because her body is screaming for more than she’s willing to take out in the open. He doesn’t hesitate this time, hands scorching a path over her lower back to grab her ass, hitching her up as he starts to walk backwards to the open door of his house.

Annabeth can take a hint. She wraps her legs around his waist, a shudder wracking through her body at how fucking _open_ it makes her. Luke must have a similar thought, because it wrings another desperate curse from him. The sound of the door slamming echoes throughout the empty halls, chased by her gasp when he shoves her up against it.

It’s darker inside. Luke pulls his mouth away from hers, kissing the corner instead, her chin, her jaw. She tangles her hands in his hair and clenches like that’s going to satisfy any of the tension building in her right now, like any of this is going to be enough.

“How far are you going to take this, Annabeth?” His teeth scrape over her skin, testing. There’s a need coiled inside him as dark as the thing driving her, but he’s holding it back, however tenuously. “Is this all it takes to get me out of your head, or am I going to fuck you up against my own front door? Or maybe--” He mouths at her earlobe, air blowing hot in its wake, “you want me on my knees?”

The flush of need starts at her throat and consumes her whole body. Words seem abruptly more dangerous than they have all night so she drags his head back until she can see him instead, the glint of pale eyes in a shadowed face. He’s panting, breathless, and Annabeth doesn’t remember the last time anyone looked at her with this much want.

She can’t bear it, so she pushes at his shoulder instead, like maybe that’ll help her get a handle on this situation. The way his mouth curls should make her hate him more, but it’s just hot instead. He knows what she wants, and has every intention of giving it to her.

“Legs,” he murmurs. She lets them hit the ground as he lets go of her ass, tugs at the hem of her shirt. “All right?”

Annabeth rolls her eyes at him. “I don’t need you to be soft with me. Trust me when I say I’ll let you know if you’re doing something wrong.”

There’s teeth in the way he grins. “Forceful.”

“Surprised?”

“Not even a little.” Her shirt goes then, and there’s teeth in the way he kisses at her throat too, scraping over her clavicle, sinking into her shoulder just enough to make her moan. 

His hand - his _knee_ slides between her thighs and his hand sweeps over her stomach with the surety of a man who knows exactly what his goal is. Annabeth’s hips stutter down against him, which only makes him push in closer, driving the pressure higher and higher until she can’t decide if she needs to grind against it or rise onto her toes to escape it.

She’s only wearing a sports bra, but she gets the feeling that Luke couldn’t give a shit what’s on her body right now, except for the part where he wants it _off._ It doesn’t leave her any room to start feeling shy or second guessing herself, not when he’s cupping her breast and mouthing her nipple through the material, the wet rub of friction better maybe than skin on skin contact. 

Good enough, at least, that she damn near bites through her lip to hold back a whimper. Her leg hooks over his hip, body settling on _grinding_ for now, except his mouth is moving further down her body, the rest of him shifting to accommodate the change in position. His tongue paints lines over his stomach, muscles twitching in response; his knee is gone and her foot hits the floor again, toes curling in her sneakers.

He thumbs open the button of her shorts, tugs them down over her hips. _Please_ floats across her mind, but she strangles the thought before it can creep up her throat. She won’t beg for this man, not now, not ever. Luke drags his tongue along the strip of skin over her underwear, seemingly delighted by the way her hips jump in response, skips over the thin cotton entirely to press a kiss to her thigh.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, sucking at the soft skin there until it turns red, purple, draws a low cry from her. “Fuck, Annabeth--”

At the sound of her name, some semblance of thought returns to her. She looks down at Luke, face between her legs, hands pressed to her thighs in reverence, kneeling in supplication. There’s something blasphemous about the whole scene and all she can think about is how fucking wet she is, and how badly she wants him.

Her hand fists in his hair again. “I want you to eat me out.”

There's no finesse to the way he gets rid of her underwear. She only gets one foot out of the tangle of material at her ankles before he's pulling her leg over his shoulder. There's a moment where the mix of hot breath and cool air over her core is enough to drive her insane, and then his mouth is on her and she's gone.

He - explores is the only word her hazy brain can come up with. It's impossible to differentiate sensation, at least until his tongue grazes her clit at the exact right angle and her whole body draws tight. A sharp cry spills over her lips, heel digging into his shoulder blade, hands holding his head right there _right there._

She half expects him to tease, as much as she can expect anything right now, but she hadn't been wrong about his being a man with a goal. Gravity stops working properly, or maybe that's his hand on her hip holding her up when her leg stops working properly, his tongue working that same spot over and over and over.

Her head thunks back against door, the whimper she'd been holding back earlier loosed from her throat, impossible to stop now it's out. The pleasure and the pressure builds until she thinks that she might just explode from need, shatter into a thousand little pieces of Annabeth right here in Luke Castellan’s doorway. She teeters on the edge, _so fucking close_ , and maybe he is torturing her after all.

Fingers slide through her folds, hot and wet and making her hyperaware of a different kind of ache. He circles her entrance but deliberately holds back and she shudders, clenching down around nothing. It's a delicious counterpoint to the driving sensation of his tongue; she can't think, can't breathe, can't do anything except feel him and his mouth and his too-clever fingers.

She cracks. Muscles draw taut, limbs shaking, hips jerking down against him as electricity lances through her body, all consuming. She's mostly silent when she comes, bowing over his head, clutching at him. Or at least she thinks she is. She doesn't remember having said anything.

The silence after is - strange. Her breathing sounds too-loud in her own ears, and she can't hear his even though she feels it puffing against her. 

Her fingers have unclenched. His forehead is pressed to her thigh as they card idly through his hair, a soft and gentle thing that seems incongruous with what they've done here. It occurs to Annabeth that she could pull on her clothes and leave now, say nothing and just walk off into the torchlight.

“Luke,” she says instead. “Look at me.”

He lifts his head and her breath catches in her throat. He's fucking beautiful, mouth smeared with her slick, eyes glittering in what little light they can grab. Annabeth unhooks her leg from his shoulder, cups his face in her hands to draw him up.

He kisses her like she's his redemption. She tastes herself on his lips and knows she's not. It doesn't stop her from sliding her hands back, cupping the back of his head like maybe he's something precious after all.

“Sorry if I pulled your hair,” she mumbles.

He chokes out a laugh. “That was the opposite of a problem.”

She's basically naked and he's still fully dressed, but Annabeth’s not the one feeling vulnerable right now. And she - yes, okay, there's a part of her that still hates him, but there's a whole tangle of other emotions there that means she can't walk away.

Or doesn’t want to. She can feel him hard against her hip, the off-beat tempo of his breathing, and the fact that she hasn’t seen this man with his shirt off is a travesty. She smooths her hands down his sides, feeling him still in surprise again when she starts to tug at the hem of his shirt.

“What, did you think we were done here?”

“I might’ve considered that you were.”

“I’m not a fan of leaving jobs half finished.” She pulls his shirt up over his head, presses a palm to the centre of his chest. Muscles jump, and a half-grin tugs at her mouth as she starts to push him back towards his bedroom. She designed these houses, she knows exactly where to go.

He left the light on. It throws both of them into sharp relief; Annabeth blinks a couple of times at the sudden change, and when colours start to make sense again, she’s faced with the sight of a shirtless Luke Castellan blatantly drinking in the sight of her. It’s almost enough to make her blush, but - she just had this man on his knees before her, what could she possibly have left to be embarrassed about?

“Pants,” she says instead, raising her eyebrows. 

She reaches behind her back at the same time, and that seems to kick his ass into gear. Belt pants, underwear, they’re gone in the time it takes her to unhook her sports bra, and - fuck. _Fuck_ , he’s all golden skin and taut muscles carved from fucking granite. A trail of dark blond curls draws her gaze down his pelvis, and she has to swallow against the urge to just have him inside her already, because _jesus_. 

The smirk she'd expected earlier is there now and she rolls her eyes again, shoving him back onto the bed.

“What, I can't be proud?” He falls back to his elbows easily and he's proud all right, cock thick and straining as she straddles his knees.

“That's more my thing.”

“ _You_ can definitely be proud.” There's less humour in his voice now, eyes heavy-lidded. Have his eyelashes always been that long? 

_Focus, Annabeth._ Except that focussing implies a level of thought she's not ready to bring into this yet. Better to just enjoy the way he looks at her like she hung the moon, and not think about any implications at all.

She slides further up his body, biting her lip at the spread of her thighs. The image of his body pinning her down comes to mind unbidden, hands grasping at her legs, holding her open as he thrusts into her--

Her hips jerk into empty air at the thought, head hanging with a harsh gasp as she collects herself. Maybe there's another world where she wants him on top of her but that feels too much like intimacy for this one.

 _Intimacy._ Like he hadn't just had his mouth on her cunt.

“Annabeth.”

“Fine,” she snaps. “I'm fine.”

She feels him thinking in the silence, assessing how he wants to reply. “Then what are you doing down there?” he settles on finally, and she pinches his thigh for the sheer level of innuendo in the words.

“You aren't getting a blow job.”

“My ego appreciates that you think I'd last.”

“Self-deprecation doesn't look good on you, Luke.”

He leans forward with a swift ease that leaves her breathless. He's gorgeous in motion, which somehow seems more dangerous to linger on now than it does in the field, and then he's right in her face again. A mess of sweat-soaked curls hangs over her face. He tucks the hair carefully behind her ear, stopping short of cupping her face the way she had in the hallway.

“Then tell me how you want me.”

 _Fuck me against the door_ comes to mind before she's fully processed what's happened. There's a part of her that's fucking gagging for that, for something hard and fast and hurtful that she can file under ‘animal lust’ and forget about. But that part of her had maybe backed off with her hand stroking his hair, blasphemy in her mind, and now - now she doesn't know any more.

Why is she here? Annabeth kisses him, hard, fast, but it doesn't offer any illumination.

“Lie back,” she tries. He does it without complaint or the use of his hands, stomach muscles flexing. Which isn’t difficult, core strength is practically a demigod requirement, but she’s reminded of the sheer physical power in the body underneath her in a way that maybe makes her legs tremble. Just a bit.

She follows him down; he hisses when her stomach brushes over his cock, eyes squeezing shut as her hand curls around the base. She’s not - dirty talk isn’t Annabeth’s strong point, but his voice is still swirling in her brain and getting her own back is something she’s good at.

So she kisses his sternum, clavicle, drops sharp, biting kisses up the side of his neck as her hand works him in a slow drag. “How long have you wanted this?” she murmurs, teeth scraping over his ear lobe. “How many time has this been your hand? How many times have I made you come without touching you, Luke?”

His hips stutter up into her palm, a low groan tearing itself from his chest. “Annabeth,” he chokes out. “ _Please_.”

It’s almost enough to break her. Her cunt throbs and the urge to slide down onto him is fast approaching desperation, but she’s not completely gone.

“Are you clean?”

The look on his face could probably murder a lesser mortal, and she can’t help but bark a laugh.

“You wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t,” he growls, and trusting Luke Castellan is a stupid thing to do but she does it anyway. Blasphemy, she thinks again, and kisses him.

“I’m being responsible,” she pants back, except she’s not, not really. “Me too. And I - have an IUD.”

“Are you trying to murder me?”

She’s not sure the answer’s no, so she shifts her hips in lieu of answering. Her fingers are shaking too as she slides his cock along her slit, teasing once, twice, before even that becomes too much and she lowers herself onto him.

The stretch and burn is delicious, just this side of too much. They’re both still for maybe half a second, breath mingling between them before she plants her hands on his chest, lifts off him, drives herself down again with enough force to knock the breath from her completely. He’s thick and hard and hot inside her and she wants more.

So she takes it. Quick and dirty _(am I going to fuck you up against my own front door?)_ except she’s the one setting the pace, pressing him into the mattress, hips rolling down into him again, again. And he rocks back up into her, following her lead with the force of his thrusts until he can’t take it anymore. His body loses the rhythm, stuttering off-tempo faster and faster and then he’s surging up off the mattress, clutching her close with one arm around her shoulders as the other reaches between them, circling her clit.

“Fuck,” she gasps, thighs burning, muscles trembling with exertion and something more, something sharper and sweeter and good. “Fuckfuckfuck, Luke, Luke--”

He comes before she does, face buried into her shoulder, hand tangled in her hair, mouthing something into her skin that she doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to. But his fingers still slide wet over her clit, determined to push her over the edge; she falls with a moan that would have embarrassed her to hear it, if she were capable of shame anymore.

She stares at the wall over his head, waiting for the regret, the self-recrimination. A part of her is even expecting a knife to the back, but none of it comes. She walks her fingers up his spine, pressing too-hard into the depressions between each vertebrae.

“I hate it here,” he says. “Watching you and - watching you succeed at everything I failed to do, while I’m trapped useless on the sidelines.”

Her fingers make it to the nape of his neck. He’s still inside her.

“I don’t think they were being merciful. I think they knew.”

Annabeth has friends that are dead because of the man between her legs right now. She should be guilty. She should feel _bad_.

She leans back instead, tipping his head away from her shoulder so she can see him. Maybe she’s an idiot for thinking he won’t lie to her. Maybe this is hubris all over again, and she’s going to wake up one of these days with an STD and the world ending around her.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing.”

Annabeth doesn’t think she imagines the _yet_ hanging on the end of that sentence. She pushes herself off him, wrinkling her nose at the rush of gravity and fluids, and maybe she should have used a condom after all. She heads for the en suite, not looking back at him.

“I’ll kill you before anyone else dies because of you, Luke.”

He laughs, flopping back onto the mattress. The sound is surprisingly youthful. “Oh, I know.”

Her heart hurts.

-

Staying the night is stupid, but doing this at all was stupid. The longer she stays in Luke’s room, his house, the longer she can avoid analysing exactly what it is she’s done here. The words _Pandora’s box_ come to mind, and don’t go away.

He stays in bed the next morning, naked under the sheet as she retraces their steps through the house to get dressed in yesterday’s clothes. She hesitates at the door, the temptation to just up and leave a real, tangible thing.

Gods, she’s a mess. Somehow - _somehow_ this had all seemed so sensible to Past Annabeth. Get in, get done, get out, minus any of the building tension in her gut. She wants to blame him, but his words from last night come back to her. _This is your choice.Your decision_.

She groans, turning on her heel and heading back to his room. He hasn’t moved, arms behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. The sheet is bunched around her waist, and she’s stopping that thought right there.

“I’m not going to tell anyone,” he says. “I’m pretty sure no one would believe me, anyway.”

“You’re probably right, but I came to say goodbye.”

Blue eyes flick over to her, a faint smile chasing it. “Goodbye, Annabeth.”

Her mouth opens, but there’s no follow up to that. She doesn’t know what to do, and she hates not knowing what to do, so she leaves.

Or at least, tries to. Running into Percy Jackson halfway down the porch stairs puts a slight damper on that plan.

Annabeth is twenty one years old and should _fucking_ know better.


End file.
